Radio Lento podcast
Radio Lento podcast presents quiet field recordings captured in natural places. Listeners are encouraged to use headphones to experience the feeling of being outside somewhere else. The show focuses on calm, immersive ambient sound rather than talk. It can be followed on Bluesky and supported via Ko-fi.
Episodes
302 Soundscenes of rolling thunder over the Pyrenees (possibly sleep safe)
Cicadas seem to go quiet when the rain sets in. They probably need to keep themselves dry to be able to make their sound. In this landscape recording we made in early August nearly all of the cicadas have stopped by about ten minutes. Then it's just the rain, and the rolling thunder, and the occasional fleeting calls of birds. And, if you are able to hear it, the watery flowings of the River Muga.
301 Tide turned on the causeway (sleep safe)
A soundscene of an island. Asleep. Between the tides.
This passage of time is from a 2025 recording the Lento box made in Bigbury-on-Sea, tied to a palm tree facing onto the beach and out towards the island.
It's the dead of night, 2am to 3am. The waves are breaking along the soft sandy beach. The tide has turned. Now it is rising. Weather conditions mild. Wind speeds very light, 1 to 2 knots. Hum
300 Suffolk maize field in coastal breezes
As the land bakes under the hot August sun, the heat rises and so draws cooler air in from over the sea. The resulting breeze is always fresh, and can flow quite strongly even when it isn't windy anywhere else. And so this is how we found coolness yesterday and relief from the relentless sun, shaded under a patch of woodland that grows by the cliffs and the raging sea below.
Along the Suffolk coas
299 Owls of Big Wood (sleep safe with owls)
Night woodland. Sonorous owls. Soft nocturnal breezes catching high in the broad-leafed trees. A panoramic woodland in spatial sound, collected by the Lento box alone.
Always so fascinating to us is how the natural world sounds at night, when there's absolutely nobody about. It's quite difficult to record though in its true resting state because human made noise is audible even from distances of t
298 Thunderstorm over sonorous rural woodland (warning - sudden shock thunderclaps)
Last month on the evening of 26 May a huge lightning storm centred over a remote wooded area on the Leicestershire-Rutland border where we had left the Lento box alone to record. From where we were staying about three quarters of a mile away we could see fork lightning. We were worried that our equipment might not survive.
In our last episode (297) we shared the hour before the tumult began. Now i
297 Sonorous rural woodland before an approaching storm
Last week we took the Lento box to capture the natural soundscapes of rural Leicestershire and Rutland. Our visit coincided with the warmest May temperatures on record and as it turned out the most powerful thunderstorms we'd ever experienced.
On the evening of 26 May huge storm clouds swept into the valley, centering exactly over a remote wooded area where we'd left the Lento box tied to a tree t
296 Looking out on Portland Harbour part 2
Here beneath the tree again, at the water's edge. Looking out on Portland Harbour. Left of scene the sunlit parapets of Nothe Fort. Ahead the flat sun-drenched sea, with lazy waves rolling in over half exposed rocks. Right of scene are some small boats, tugging against their moorings. Rising and falling on light swell.
The sparrows seem to like it here. The lazy waves. The peace gathered in around
295 Low tide on the causeway - part II (sleep safe with occasional herring gulls and oyster catchers)
A soundscene, of an island. Asleep. Between the tides. About this time last year we visited Burgh Island in Devon on the south west coast of England. We made two long-form overnight recordings while we were there. Burgh Island is reached on-foot from Bigbury-on-Sea via a sand causeway. The causeway completely disappears beneath the waves twice a day at high tide making the island accessible only v
294 Dawn in Shelve Wood Shropshire with cuckoo
The moment we entered Shelve Wood we knew it was a perfect place to record. Shropshire is sparsely populated. There's only one B road in the Shelve Wood area. The country lanes carry little traffic, and on the day we were on-location the skies were very often empty of aircraft. These qualities are highly valuable because they allow the delicate natural sound in the environment to reach your eardru
293 Pools of Rye Harbour (sleep safe)
The Lento box records alone, tied to a tree, behind thickets of gorse. The night hours pass. The microphones capture the panoramic peace of this wild coastal landscape. Rye Harbour Nature Reserve on the East Sussex coast. The tree holding the mics overlooks one of the many small lakes across the reserve. In daytime these bodies of water mirror the sky, and provide different types of wildlife with
292 Moorland trees in December gales - Derbyshire (sleep safe after owls at start)
Exposed moorland trees create a strong natural source of undulating white noise when shouldering the brunt of a winter gale. The sounds they produce are uniquely enchanting and an absolute delight to experience. For us it's the beating heart of what it is to be immersed in the great outdoors, and one of the reasons we set Radio Lento up in the first place. To capture and share the aural essences
291 High tide turning - the Crouch Estuary in Essex (sleep safe)
The waves settle into wavelets. The wavelets settle to calm. Then it's just the pure sound of estuary emptiness, at night.
Following on from episode 288 it's several hours later, about 4 in the morning, and the tide has finally turned along the exposed seawall opposite Wallasea Island.
The soundscape captured conveys the aural essences of this beautifully exposed and empty place. Near-scene the mo
290 Night rain in the Pyrenees (sleep safe)
We love the ambience of Sant Llorence de la Muga, a small village high in the Pyrenees. It's a beautifully peaceful place but we know the sound of the bells every quarter are not ideal for those wanting to spend time with the rain, the open peacefulness of mountainous quiet, and the occasional beeps of what we think are nocturnal frogs. So, this passage of time is from episode 281, adjusted.
With
289 Dawn birds of rural Shropshire
Welcome back to Radio Lento and a new year of captured quiet from natural places. It's so good you are here.
To open 2026 we're heading back to rural Shropshire which we visited last year thanks to a listener recommendation. We found so many perfect places on this trip in May.
Remember almost every Lento soundscape is made when there's nobody about, not even us. What you hear is a fully authentic
288 Tidal estuary at night (sleep safe with plane at 23m)
Tied to a railing, the Lento box records alone. It's about two in the morning along the river bank east of Burnham-on-Crouch in Essex. Wind is blowing inland from the east, light, gusting to moderate. Sky dark, and heavy with cloud. Huge rainclouds are approaching, currently located out over the North Sea. When they arrive this whole area will be subjected to long periods of persistent, often squa
287 Dusk on Boggle Hole beach - North Yorkshire coast
The still luminous sky above the sheer rock cliffs was turning an even deeper shade of blue, as we stepped down onto the wet sand of the beach at Boggle Hole. For a moment we just had to stand. Take it all in. Wide stretches of undulating sand. Half submerged boulders like sleeping elephants. Towering rock faces so vertical and so angled that they catch and reflect every breaking wave, every calli
286 Night crickets of the Kent coast (long sleep safe + some soft overflying planes)
Capturing the sound-feel of real night quiet is special. It requires a lot of time and a location where quiet naturally occurs in more than just a fleeting way. Quiet is not silence. Silence is the absence of sound, whereas quiet happens when everything in the landscape is still audible. Just softer, and slower.
Night brings quiet to natural and edgeland places. It enables us to better hear an env
285 Late October on Chesil Beach (sleep safe)
The making of this high-definition sound photograph of Chesil Beach began thanks to the number 1 bus from Weymouth to Portland. As we stepped aboard, the sky felt low. Folded and layered with grey October cloud. Rain was in the forecast so we'd taken raincoats.
After twenty minutes and the final stretch across the exposed coastal road, the bus pulled into our stop. On the way the views of Portlan
284 The wind of Long Mynd
Reaching the top of Long Mynd in rural Shropshire requires a good steady climb. The rocky footpath winds up and up, and so must you, if you want to get to the top. Most people do, as much for that sense of physical achievement gained over an hour or two, as the views. 360 degree panoramic views of all that makes this whole area so special. But before you get to those views, there are many other fa
283 Night trees of Boggle Hole (sleep safe)
Robin Hood's Bay on the North Yorkshire coast feels remote for England. It lies at the bottom of a very steep road that descends down from the road between Whitby and Scarborough. The sign at the top of the village warns sightseers interested in a look not even to try driving down. With virtually no traffic noise and the whole area under a quiet sky, we knew this was a good place for the Lento mic
282 Night train to Paris (sleep safe if you like trains)
The environment within the cabin of a sleeper train is, well, unusual. Quite contradictory. It feels empty when you first step in, but full seconds later. It has a dead quiet feel, whilst also being noisy. It affords little physical space to move about in, yet anything you accidentally drop ends up out of reach. It would feel claustrophobic too if it weren't also strangely spatial when the lights
281 Night rain in the Pyrenees (sleep safe with chimes)
Beside the only road leading out of Sant Llorenc de la Muga we found a small group of trees. We didn't have much time. The sky was pitch black and the ground beneath our feet was streaming with water that'd all come down a few minutes ago in a deluge with simultaneous flashes of forked lightening so powerful, so bright, they'd temporarily frozen us to the spot. We shone our torch from tree to tree
280 Pyrenees thunder above watery valley
Our friends told us that in Sant Llorenc the weather changes towards the end of August. Endless days of thick summer heat gives way to something altogether more dramatic. Ominous black clouds the size of cities. Rain drops like translucent grapes. Fork lightening like you see at the cinema. Thunder, that carves open the sky, like unimaginably huge boulders crashing downwards from the high mountain
279 Lento Long - Kielder Collection (180 minutes)
For this second August intermission we've once again brought together multiple recordings made across a location to share as one very long non-stop piece.
This episode is our second ever "Lento Long". Three hours of spatial sound landscape captured from the Kielder Forest in Northumberland in the North East of England near to the Scottish border. It may all be sleep safe, depending on your own pe
278 Lento Long - Quantocks collection (180 minutes)
It's August intermission time! This year we've decided to bring together recordings from more than one location in a specific geographic area and share them as a long non-stop episode.
This is our first ever "Lento Long" at 3 hours. A chance to aurally travel across a geographic area and experience it from different perspectives.
Depending on your own personal sensitivities to human made sound, i
277 Emptiness within Shelve Wood at night - part II (sleep safe)
This week we're returning to Shelve Wood in Shropshire to witness another hour from the unaccompanied overnight capture we made in June. This section of time includes the effects of a strong weather front. It sweeps over the dense woodland, creating rich spatial waves of naturally occurring white, brown and grey noise.
Because the Lento box spent the whole night alone immersed within the forest,
276 First rain after drought (high definition spatial sound)
It's not often we record from the back garden. The spot is suburban. Grassy and full of tangled shrubs yes, and encircled by a sprawling wisteria too that visually at least gives a verdantly self contained feel. But foliage while beguiling the eye does not strain out the roads and street sounds of the city. Or the sky. Flight paved, plane lined, jet rumbled. No, quiet is never in abundance here.
275 Dawn in an apple tree - Derbyshire hills
A bright April day has dawned in Derbyshire earlier in the spring. The air is unusually still for this time of year and this upland location. At just under a thousand feet barely a breeze is ruffling the trees surrounding the mics. These are the same trees that can be heard so powerfully in episode 250 - Moorland trees in mid-winter gales.
Far across the valley, stretching from far left to far ri
274 Burgh Island midnight tide (sleep safe)
(pronounced Birr Island)
This long, slow Devon day, is drawing softly to a close. Looking out to sea, the sky beyond has already fallen velvet black. It's midnight. Scattered lamps shine on Burgh Island. It looks from here more like a dark thicket, afloat on a vast water field. With glow worms, hiding.
The tide's in now. Closed around the island. Encircled it, with rich undulating sound. Filled u
273 Sunset fields and oak trees - spring in Shropshire
Oak trees have a very particular sound this time of year. It's to do with the leaves. Their texture, shape and contours. How they catch and filter the breeze. On a warm spring day, like this one the Lento box captured last month in rural Shropshire, you can hear the softness of the moving air sonified by banks of oak leaves.
The scene around the microphone box, tied to the trunk of a relatively yo
272 Emptiness within Shelve Wood at night (sleep safe)
Experiencing the spatial sense of emptiness, in a natural place, when there's nobody about, endlessly fascinates us. We built a high resolution immersive sound capture device to study it. We find natural places to leave it out recording alone, to capture quiet scenes in sound. Of time passing.
We are all intrinsically hyper-attentive to the possible presence of people within our surroundings. Any
271 Wild breezes in the reeds - spring along the Thames Estuary
This soundscene was captured two weeks ago from a rackety wooden fence beside a grass meadow. Reeds are growing to right of scene, waving and hushing in strong gusts of spring warm wind. Centre, a view out across the meadow. Left of scene, over a rough track and an overgrown strip of marshy land is the Thames Estuary. Above, from time to time, skylarks. Hidden not too far off in a thicket, a cetti
270 Soundscene from Northward Hill Nature Reserve featuring a nightingale
Whilst out along the Kent side of the Thames Estuary on Saturday, aiming to capture the sound of skylarks and reeds, we met a walker with a very friendly border terrier. She told us there was talk of a nightingale not too far away at RSPB's Northward Hill Nature Reserve. We aren't strictly speaking wildlife recordists, the Lento box is designed like a wide angle camera to capture panoramic landsca
269 Night crickets distant waves - Folkestone Warren (sleep safe)
At this spot, high up on The Warren, in the dead of night, live the crickets. They're everywhere. Stridulating, like tiny minute hands etching the moments, of this night's time passing. Crisp. Unwitnessed. They're probably dark bush crickets.
The Lento box records the scene alone, on a warm night last August. Tied to a very difficult tree. Difficult because it was very spiny. And off the path, par
268 A wild ocean above ancient tree stumps
Pett in Sussex. A 'small peaceful seaside village'. Here you can visit a little timber chapel on the beach with an open door to a kitchen. You can take a seat, absorb the atmosphere, then make yourself a cup of tea if you like, choose a book from the shelves and drop your donation into the honesty box. Before heading out to explore the wild pebble beach, crashing waves and sea defences. All perfec
267 Hidden dell at night (sleep safe)
This week we're staying on the uplands of rural Derbyshire to hear a passage of time from the dead of night. We captured it last month, from a location very near to last week's episode,
About half a mile upstream, high above the valley pastures where the sheep live, hides a watery dell. It's shrouded under tangled trees, who no doubt thrive on the plentiful supply of water. An iron age track slope
266 On upland pastures
Left of scene, a steep uninhabited valley, shrouded under dense woodland. Right of scene, rough pastures and grass meadows sloping gradually up, towards a distant horizon. Centre, a silvery glimpse of the moorland stream that's flowed down into this valley for as long as rain began to fall.
Spring has arrived. The valley is verdant green, and alive with song birds, sheep and lambs. The air is so
265 Low tide on the causeway (sleep safe)
Last week we visited Burgh Island in Devon on the south west coast of England. We made two overnight recordings, both looking out towards the island from Bigbury-on-Sea. The island is connected to the mainland by a sand causeway. This passage of time is from the second unaccompanied overnight recording, midnight to 1am.
The darkness is solid. A landscape only sparsely inhabited. Low tide was seve
264 Garden rain at night (sleep safe)
Last summer when we were stuck at home, and when heavy rain was forecast between midnight and three, we decided it'd be nice to capture its sound. The idea is enchanting. Rain, falling, on a little suburban garden, verdant with plants and shrubs of various kinds, as they quietly and invisibly sleep through the night.
Hearing this scene though, is only possible by staying up and getting very tired
263 Wild open coastal reserve
Sat back, looking onto Rye Harbour nature reserve. There, to the ear, is the sea. From here it's out of sight, somewhere below the long shingle ridge. From this point across the reserve, it could to the ear be an aural sunrise. A wall of natural energy, lighting up the horizon with clean, white, spatialised noise.
On the intervening land, stray gusts of wind swish swathes of sea grasses. Press wh
262 Night stream at West Quantoxhead (sheep sleep safe)
We found our way to record this remote location late at night, and in near total darkness. A sheltered dell, with a fresh running stream. Earlier in the day, when everything was bathed in bright grey light, we'd walked through this secluded place on our way down from West Quantoxhead, and decided it might be a perfect spot for the Lento box to make a long overnight recording.
There's a branch just
261 Midnight in Rye
Twelve strikes the clock, of St Mary's Church in Rye, East Sussex. Midnight. A sound that for anyone left awake, opens a new page. It's a new day, captured by the Lento box perched high above the churchyard, one night in mid-February.
The new day reads like this. The gnarled limb of a winter tree beside the churchyard creaks against an undulating wind. The flagpole at the top of the belfry tower,
260 Early spring in the Derbyshire hills
What a long-form sound landscape recording of the Derbyshire hills reveals, is space, weather, and birds.
A buzzard. Mistle thrush. Song thrush. Great tit. Geese. Wren. Robin. Jackdaw. Pheasant. Black cap. All present in their different ways. Buffeted by strong spring breezes under grey skies.
Ahead, down the fields, mid-left of scene, the rushing river fills the valley with soft white no
259 Night rain under a large tarpaulin (sleep safe)
Sometimes, when persistent rain is forecast overnight, we place the Lento box out in the back garden on a long battery to capture the sound. Falling rain is always enchanting, especially at night when the city is asleep.
We leave a large tarpaulin stretched across the yard to catch the raindrops as they fall. We position the microphone box centrally, angled up, so as the rain falls at random acro
258 Tidal breakers on Winchelsea beach (high definition spatial sound)
It is almost high tide on Winchelsea Beach. Old timbers, buried in the shingle berm, point up into the hazy winter sky. You scrunch over the stones. Rest your hands on their sturdy weatherworn tops. And begin to take in the scene.
Clean sea air cuffs against your face. It smells faintly of salt, of sea wetted rock. The beach rakes sharply down into bright white froth. Then just blue-grey, out to
257 Dawn birds of The Kielder Forest
This spatial sound-scene of dawn birdsong was captured from deep within the Kielder Forest, a huge wilderness of fir trees in the far north east of England almost at the border with Scotland.
Along with most all of our 257 episodes, this audio was produced by leaving the Lento box to record alone on-location, over a long span of time. By listening back to the captured audio we pick out sections t
256 Gulls and emptiness along the Creel Path
(Hello! We're a different type of podcast. If you're new to us, before you listen, here's a few tips about getting the most out of listening to Radio Lento.)
The Creel Path, used by generations of fisherman to get from Coldingham to the coastal fishing village of St Abbs in the far south east of Scotland, is a thousand years old. It crosses an exposed coastal landscape, with rough pastures lying e
255 Quantock trees in late October air (night and sleep safe)
A wide open landscape, under a dark October sky. Remote. Naturally quiet. Witnessed from behind a lone cottage hidden between tall graceful trees.
It's just rained. Drips are falling from the old slate roof into an overfilled drain. Time passes. Somewhere far off, mid-right of scene, an owl hoots. It's call, carried on the wind from rolling fields below.
These late season leaves, so present in t
254 Waves of West Somerset (sleep safe)
Follow the path with the sea on your left side, until you reach the trees. It's only a small outcrop, just beyond the banks of tangled shrubbery and before you get to the location of a 19th century harbour of Lilstock in West Somerset, now long-gone. Step off the path. Lean against one of the smooth bark trees, the one closest to where the pebbles start. And listen.
We captured this aural scene o
253 Quiet night sky - Looe in Cornwall (sleep safe)
Quiet sky. This is how one sounds. Above Looe, on the Cornish coast. Thousands of cubic miles of empty air. No planes. No cars. No lorries to throw up their noise as they haul loads along dark country roads. Just gusts, and sea breezes. And a fleeting low whistle from a high chimney pot. Many steep tiled rooves, catching, and reflecting, and handing on their view of this sky's whisping sussuration
252 Late July breezes through the old churchyard
This barmy afternoon in Holme-Next-The-Sea has gained a stiff undulating wind. It hurries past the sheep in the paddock next to St Mary's church. Whisps through banks of unmown grasses, sifting up their scent. Shakes dry-leaved hedgerows so they sound as summer dry as the baked mud looks by the lane. Yes, today certainly feels like it's the first day of late summer.
Sit then on the bench undernea
251 Looking out on Portland Harbour
Portland.
Southeast 4 or 5 increasing 7 or 8 veering South 4 or 5 later.
Occasional showers.
Good, becoming moderate.
The Shipping Forecast marks its centenary on the BBC today. Happy birthday from Radio Lento!
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Take as a seat one of the large flat stones under a tree. It's a lone tree, full of sparrows. Watch the ocean boats. The high tide is on the turn. Shallow waves rolling about betw
250 Moorland trees in mid-winter gales (sleep safe after owl)
For Christmas Eve we're sharing this nocturnal hour of sound landscape time captured by the Lento box in the high peaks of Derbyshire. Bare leafless trees, sighing together, in strong undulating mid-winter wind. We feel this is one of our most atmospheric overnight recordings of landscape trees.
To far left of scene across a field there's a strip of woodland made mainly of tall established conife
249 Night stream at West Quantoxhead (sleep safe after 17 mins)
With the stream to our right, we headed down from the exposed uplands of West Quantoxhead and into a shallow valley. Sky whitish grey. Air still. It smelled of rich late Autumn undergrowth, and faintly of mushrooms.
As we descended, the landscape changed. Became tucked in. Shapes of sheep shifted against dark thickets below. The grass got thicker too, and taller. And the stream got fuller, and mo
248 Late morning air on Kilve beach
Kilve beach is edged by sheer cliffs and is made of rocks. Mostly small ones the size of oranges, up to medium sized ones the size of sofa cushions. To cross over them is unstable and you have to move like a penguin, which must be fun to watch if you aren't the one trying to stay upright. Jutting up between the smaller rocks are huge mattress sized boulders that are either massive flat topped rock
247 Natural white noise from the firs of Kielder Forest
This is segment II from a 6-hour sound capture we took earlier this year at Kielder Forest in Northumberland. Recorded in spring, the environment is rich with birdsong, mainly willow warblers whose song is a short and very cheerful descending scale. We'd been walking along one of the rough paths that thread through the forest below the Kielder Observatory and had found exactly what we'd travelled
246 Edgeland time by the Hythe Sound Mirror (sleep safe)
Turn right off the towpath beside the Military Canal, cross the footbridge, locate the stile that leads onto the hill, then follow the rough footpath up into some impressive edgeland. It's rough. Grassy. Very thistly. And as you ascend it feels hard. Increasingly wild. It's somewhere up here, we say, striding firm against the gradient. But the thing's not marked on the map.
The Sound Mirror of H
245 Night rain on the edge of the Quantock hills (sleep safe)
It was late. Everybody had gone to bed. The remote cottage where we were staying in the Quantock Hills still felt warm, even though the oil burner had knocked itself off a while ago. Despite this, the place had started to feel, well, a bit strange and I wasn't quite sure what the feeling was.
I put the kettle on and the strange feeling went away. I made the tea, set the kettle back on its stand,
244 Rocky West Somerset beach (high-definition sound)
We found this quiet place in West Somerset. Afternoon waves softly breaking along a rocky beach under October sunshine. The low landscape of Wales visible across the water.
Lilstock. A port in bygone times, according to someone we met coming the other way. Now disused. A landscape of stony footpaths. Dense patches of shrubbery around outcrops of trees. Endless meadows and dry ditches. Fresh water
243 Night callings in the Forest of Dean - interleaved worlds
It isn't often we hear strange calls coming out of our long overnight captures, but this was one. The dead of night deep in the Forest of Dean, and a call that from the quiet emptiness begins to echo. Human? Dog? Muntjac deer? All three, or none? Muntjac deer are commonly heard repeating a single harsh bark across rural landscapes at night though this sound doesn't quite match the sound signatur
242 Kentish landscape time
Daytime contentedness can be found here. Between the rustling leaves and trees of Folkestone Warren that rolls greenly down towards the sea. We couldn't have known when we set up the Lento box under hot early August sunshine that the next day of recording would bring such strong breezes.
This strip of natural Kentish land is made of green plunging wilderness. It has a campsite next to a rocky and
241 Natural white noise from Folkestone Warren beach at night (sleep safe)
An hour of uninterrupted white noise. Naturally occurring and fully spatial. Captured by the Lento box last weekend from a tree overlooking the beach under Folkestone Warren. Low soft rumbling of the crashing waves. Mid-range curtains of dark grey-blue backwash, that seem to billow and shimmer like hanging fabrics. Fine layers of crisper whiter noise, formed from the frothing and fizzing sea water
240 Wide time in the Kielder Forest (sleep safe with distant geese)
Last week we shared wide time captured from a North Norfolk beach as night fell. This week it's wide time from the vast interior of the Kielder Forest. Human-free night vastness is an experience so out of reach to us, and indeed to most people, that travelling with the Lento box to bring it back in the raw is always top of our list.
Kielder is a mostly uninhabited landscape made of hills, trees an
239 Intertidal zone - night approaching
Holme Dunes, Norfolk.
At low tide, and with night approaching, we finally managed to set up the Lento box on a tripod on the sand, mics facing out to sea. It was the curlews at dusk, framed within the vastness of the empty beach, that we wanted to capture as a photograph in sound. It felt good to have reached a spot to record, after a lot of walking. It was though still only the mid-point of the
238 Harvest fields aside The Peddars Way (100th location)
On the breeze, rich scents of hot Norfolk farmland. In the air, tiny wippling birds. Some swallows? Across the field, and across the next, a combine harvester large as a house. And quick as a car. It sails low over the far meadow, like a paddle steamer on a bright green sea.
Standing on the Peddars Way, Lento box in hand, we've stopped to take in the heat, and to listen. Wide carpets of crickets a
237 Sighing sea beyond the Warren
It is first light. Birds are waking. Beginning to fill the air with sonorous sounds of life. A few dark bush crickets are still cricketing, just, though soon they'll go quiet for the day. The view is of green. More green. And yet more green. A whole valley of thickly growing thickets, trees, and dense shrubs, slowly emerging into visual reality under an increasingly luminous dawn sky.
Another for
236 Sunlit beach below the Warren
Capturing the experience and 'sound-feel' of crashing waves is always a challenge. Strong on-shore breezes and the unbridled energy of thousand ton waves breaking over unyielding rock can simply be too much for sensitive microphones. Yet as we sit on the concrete sea defences, bathed in hot afternoon August sun, waiting for the first tingles of cold sea spray to land on our legs, the experience is
235 Night crickets above distant crashing waves (sleep safe)
Welcome back to a new Lento season of captured quiet. Sound landscapes from real places. This segment of spatial audio, best through headphones, was captured on the Kent coast in early August from beside a winding path in a steeply wooded area of Folkestone called the Warren. France is visible from this elevated spot. Around half a mile below, is the beach and the crashing waves. It is midnight.
234 Wild and exposed places - Intermission 4
Welcome to this final intermission of August 2024, a specially blended episode of soundscapes from wild and exposed places taken from the last year of Lento. The first three sound-scenes reveal aural views of the outside world seen from within interior places. A coastal hotel room, the belfry of an ancient church, and inside a bird hide. The final sound-scene is of an exposed estuary by Burnham-on
233 Rain - Intermission 3
Welcome to intermission 3 of 4 and another specially blended soundscape taken from the last year of Lento. The theme is rain. Gorgeous, refreshing, soothing rain. Four sound-scenes that reveal the way falling rain varies in texture and feel across four different locations.
204 Rain falls on steep craggy woodland (*sleep safe)
Fresh rain. Fresh woodland rain, from Miller's Dale in Derbyshire. Fro
232 Waves and shorelines - Intermission 2
Welcome to intermission 2, the second specially blended soundscape from the past year of Lento. This week's theme is waves and shorelines. There are four sections that blend effortlessly into each other. The sound-view into each watery place lasts around eleven minutes and enables you to compare and contrast the wide variations in aural detail from place to place, beach to beach, and at different
231 Streams and rivers - Intermission 1
Welcome to our first intermission episode. August is an especially busy recording month for us so while we are away, we want to share with you some specially blended soundscapes from the past year of Lento. This week's theme is streams and rivers. There are four sections that blend effortlessly into each other. The sound-view into each watery place lasts around eleven minutes.
209 Downstream of
230 Murmuring firs of Kielder Forest
Fir trees don't have what you might call normal leaves. Their leaves are needles. Each tree possesses many needles, too many to count. Especially when the height of these trees ranges from 12 to 23 stories high. Concentrated in these myriad tiny needles, is a wonderful and special power. Position yourself deep within a fir forest, with even the slightest of breezes blowing high above, and you'll f
229 Dusk dissolves to night in the cathedral of trees
On a warm May evening deep in the Forest of Dean, the sound of dusk is alive with birdsong from many different species. The air literally fizzes with the energy produced by avian communications. Their calls and songs echo over long distances, they reflect and bounce from tree trunk to tree trunk, reverberate and dissipate. It's the sheer quantity of solid surfaces that give this aural environment
228 Summer rain under the wisteria (sleep safe)
Earlier this week we left the Lento box out to record overnight. Persistent rain was forecast from midnight onwards after a spell of dry weather. We never lose interest in the sound of falling rain. Being outside during a shower invokes strong feelings that must have evolved over millions of years.
To make these local rain recordings we normally set the Lento box on a tripod underneath a tarpauli
227 Light rain on the headland (sleep safe)
Being out on a headland is an experience as fresh as it is freeing. Fresh because these steep craggy places resound continuously, without end, with the effects of ocean and wild weather. Freeing, because they let you feel with all your senses, the reality of the world. A world seven tenths covered in water.
Like bathing in forest sound created by the micro-turbulances of air moving through countle
226 Perhaps a perfect upland stream (sleep safe)
Perhaps it is, though you may know of one even more perfect. This stream follows a country road high in the empty hills above the small town of Ceri in the Welsh county of Powys. We've shared many sections from this 2019 recording over the four years of Lento. The area feels magical, being very near to the Ceri Ridgeway (Kerry in English) an ancient route used for trading between Wales and England
225 Night suburban garden - quiet sound brutalism (sleep safe)
Night rain, as it falls onto a quiet suburban garden, has a cool and spacious sound-feel. It seems to help focus the mind's eye onto the presence of objects and surfaces that without the rain would simply not exist, to the ear. Even to the eye, in such murky darkness, these objects and surfaces are not things that make sense in and of themselves.
This nocturnal suburban soundscape, stippled with f
224 Shallow river under an open sky (sleep safe)
Back we go again to Miller's Dale in the Derbyshire hills. To this quiet spot, beside a shallow river wrilling. There's a country lane, and a steep grassy bank down to the river where an old tree grows. The tree, so gnarled, and with an unusually stout trunk, must have grown here for decades. Maybe even a century, or more.
At about five feet from the ground it split into two almost equally thick
223 Birdsong in deep forest ambience
Whilst walking up towards the observatory in the Kielder forest, we passed large areas of cleared woodland. "Fallen in the great storm of 2021" a passing forester explained in the afternoon sunshine. In some sections, the trees had been cut and stacked. Rows of tree trunks that smelled deliciously rich with the resin-y smell of Christmas trees. We found the smell instantly relaxing, as if it reduc
